Entry for January

Ramona was walking into the lounge bar overlooking the beach when the first shudder came. The sad-eyed English entertainer glanced out of the window but her fingers didn’t miss a note on the piano as she continued singing ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ with the same weary intonation. Twenty years ago she had dropped out of university and taken the hippy route to India, singing in clubs and bars when funds ran low. When India proved not to be the paradise she had expected she just kept on moving. Her face was already lined from too much sun and disappointment.

Ramona sat down at a table near the piano. Not wanting to offer the singer any encouragement to come over in her break, she pulled her tourist guide out of her bag and pretended to read. She had heard a little too much last night of her failed love affairs. She had tried to tactfully suggest that she might do better if she didn’t appear quite so desperate. But the poor woman hadn’t been in the market for advice, just someone to talk at.

A nervous little waiter approached her and she ordered a Titanic. Outside, the palm trees were still swaying from the earth tremor.

At the next table a businessman was busy trying to sell to a bearded local in combat fatigues and dark glasses. She could hear him talking about range, reload speed and destructive power.

Ramona’s eye caught the sparkle of the evening sunlight on diamonds and she looked up to see the Russian widow catwalking across the lounge. She made straight for the retired bank robber sitting alone in the corner.

“What’s going on,” the widow asked him. “I felt the earth move.”

“Oh it’s nothing,” he said. “It happens all the time out here. It’s just a little neighbourly dispute between two tectonic plates.”

Behind the bar the nervous waiter was whispering into a telephone.

The retired bank robber poured a glass of wine for the Russian widow but he was looking across at Ramona. When she arrived here a week ago he had cornered her at the bar and tried to impress her with his life story, which she had found remarkably dull for a bank robber. The only interesting aspect being that in his free time he was an amateur scientist. In between planning raids and serving time he had spent years doing bizarre experiments with water.

In her peripheral vision Ramona saw the waiter hurrying out through the lobby with a brown paper package under his arm. He glanced back in the direction of the businessman and his client. She watched with idle curiosity as he hovered around a black four-by-four parked outside. He chatted to the driver for a few minutes and then waved his hand in the direction of the bar. The driver got out of the car, walking into the hotel and found the gents. The waiter seemed very tense, continually looking around him. Then she lost sight of him behind some bushes for a minute as he ducked down by the side of the car.

The businessman was now leaning forward and talking more urgently to Combat Fatigues, a representative of the rebel army she assumed. He pushed some papers across to him, took out his pen and offered it to him.

Outside, the sea withdrew to regroup its forces for the big push, exposing five miles of sea bed that hadn’t seen the light of day since the Pleistocene. But nobody seemed to notice except the singer and she didn’t react.

As a further tremor brought a shower of plaster down from the ceiling the waiter hurried back into the lounge empty handed and looking as if he had just run a mile.

At the next table, Mr. Insurgency didn’t seem too keen to sign the papers in front of him. He ignored the proffered pen and picked up his beret is if he to leave. The businessman laughed loudly and slapped him on the back.

“Hey, you guys sure are good at this,” he said. “OK, OK, I’ll tell what I’ll do.” He reached across the table and made some alteration on the papers. “There you go. And I hope y’all remember who your friends are when you are in power.”

The rebel leader smiled, picked up the pen and signed the paper in front of him. They stood up, shook hands and the freedom fighter turned, hurried out through the lobby and jumped into the black SUV that was waiting outside with the engine now running.

The businessman gave a triumphant laugh and waved his arm in the direction of the bar, “Set ‘em up for everyone,” he said. But the barman had disappeared so he got behind the bar himself and called out, “OK, the drinks are on me. What’ll it be folks?”

As he was mixing a Krakatoa for the Russian widow another, stronger tremor shook the bottle of Vermouth out of his hand. He shrugged as it shattered on the tiled floor and pulled out another bottle from under the bar.

Having poured the drinks he moved over to join Ramona.

“Never fails,” he said. “Offer them a ten per cent ‘commission’ and they’ll happily pay double the price.”

“Congratulations,” she said while watching the swinging chandelier. “But maybe we should all get out of here.”

Behind him, the singer paused between songs and listened to their conversation.

“I am leaving shortly anyway,” he said. “I could give you a lift to the airport if you like. My limo’s waiting outside. We could have a bit of fun in the back on the way over. What do you say?”

She stood up, smiled at him and shook her head.

“Some other time maybe,” she said and walked off. In the mirror she watched the singer undo another button on her shirt, slip off her piano stool and approach the businessman. She slipped her arm around his shoulders and bent down and whispered something in his ear. But he waved her away and shook his head. As the walls rocked and the glass in the patio doors cracked he threw back his drink and got up to leave.

The singer resumed her place at the piano and launched into, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’.

Ramona walked into the lobby, on the landward side of the building, to organise a taxi but the lobby was deserted and the phone was dead. As she hurried back to the bar to weigh up her options she ran into the retired bank robber heading for the marble staircase.

“How come there is never a getaway car when you really need it,” he said. Then, jerking his head back at the widow he said, “She’s always chasing me. I can’t seem to shake her off. She keeps trying to buy me. But I’m not interested in her money. I am looking for love. With a kindred spirit.” He looked into her eyes. “I want to find a soul mate, but she’s got no culture.”

She walked on past him and he scuttled upstairs muttering about getting his false passport. Doubtless he could see his no-extradition-treaty sanctuary slipping away from him. But she knew it was too late. The airport would be closed by now.

She crossed the lounge and walked over to the Russian widow.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. I’m fine,” she said with a proud shake of her head. “I don’t know why I bother. I’m tired of gangsters. I’ve known so many in my country and they are all so boring, with their crazy hobbies. Or else they spend all their time watching television and playing snooker. I thought he might be different but he’s not. I want some fun before I die.”

Then the widow noticed the sea heading back towards them at some speed.

“Wait,” she said standing up. “This is no local neighbourly dispute. This is gang warfare.”

Ramona said, “You’re right. Come on, we need to get out of here.” She took the Russian widow’s arm and dragged her out towards the main entrance. The lounge was deserted now except for the singer.

“Let’s go,” she shouted at her. “Quick, you need to leave now.” But the singer carried on playing as a single tear trickled down her face.

In the lobby the widow wanted to go to her room to get her things. Looking back through the lounge Ramona could see the sea walking tall as it came roaring up the beach towards them.

“There’s no time. We have to run,” she said.

Outside she could see the waiter, praying for salvation at the statue of the God with the body of a sea serpent. The widow took off her high heels and Ramona grabbed her by the hand and led her running out of the hotel, past the kneeling waiter and away from the sea. Further down the road a jet of black smoke shot into the air followed by the sound of the explosion.

Behind them the ocean kicked in the sea-view windows and came storming through the lounge.

The retired bank robber was upstairs with a bag across his shoulders trying to lock the door to his room. He had spent much of his free time over the years trying to find a way of making water flow uphill so he was astonished, looking over his shoulder, to see the ocean surge up the stairwell and drop the grand piano on the second floor landing.

The earth shook its shoulders like a dog coming out of the river. The roof slid off and the hotel fell to its knees on the landscaped garden. The sea swaggered on up the hillside behind the hotel ripping up the mango plantations and coconut palms in its path. At the top of the hill it paused as if bored with all this vandalism and then it slouched back towards the beach.

Ramona clung to a bedraggled and half uprooted papaya tree near the top of the hill. Behind her the careless Indian Ocean sucked the wreckage out to sea leaving nothing but some illegible contract documents and the sheet music for ‘All this Useless Beauty’ blowing across the empty beach.

Submissions for entry into the November 2012 Creative Writing Competition closed at Midnight on 30th. November 2012.
Voting can now commence and will continue until 11 p.m. on Saturday the 8th. December […]

October 18th. 2014.
A lunch for CW Group members took place today at the Priory Hotel in Portbury.
Members attending in person were Fizzeerascal, Giselle, Pavlovaqueen, Arche_tp, Charles Stuart, and Bleda. […]

Submissions for entry into the October 2012 Creative Writing Competition closed at Midnight on 31st.. October 2012.
Voting can now commence and will continue until 11 p.m. on Wednesday the 7th. of November […]